Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) is the kind of cowboy that mamas are warned not to let their babies grow up to be. He has no respect for authority, and he...
Lonely Are The Brave
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Western Movies
Ken Burns’s Best Work Ever
Ken Burns is more than a chronicler of American history and culture. As early as 1981, when Burns presented his film on the history of the Brooklyn...
The Mythic West That Matters Now
In his famous 1893 frontier thesis, Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the juncture between the civilization of East and the savagery of the...
Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theater
Buyers of this DVD collection, which presents the first season of TV’s Zane Grey Theater, will find an essay I wrote sharing Zane Grey’s phenomenal...
Jonah Hex’s Gunspinner Extraordinaire
“Rocketshoes!” says Josh Brolin with a huge grin, as soon as I mention Joey Dillon’s name. “He’s unbelievable. He’s the fastest thing I’ve ever...
Spaghetti Western Returns
Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky is no stranger to Westerns; lines formed around the block to watch his psycho-surreal Spaghetti Western El...
Riding The Wall On The Outlaw Trail
Old West history is filled with legendary names, legendary places. And without a doubt, one of them is Hole-In-The Wall. The rugged and remote...
“Draw, Old Chap”
At this moment, on Clerkenwell Green in London, England, a lean cowboy with steel-blue eyes loosens his Colt’s revolver in its holster and pushes...
Angel & the Badman Remake
As unlikely as it seems, a remake of the very terrific John Wayne Oater, Angel and the Badman, is due out in 2009, starring Lou Diamond Phillips...
No Country For Old Men
Watching No Country For Old Men once again, this time as a DVD, only serves to remind me how thoroughly terrific Joel & Ethan Coen are at mixing...
The Life and Legend of Hugh O’Brian
Hugh O’Brian is Wyatt Earp. By that I mean that in talking with O’Brian, one gets the sense that the actor is in many ways as contradictory as the...
Western Writers Pick Top 100 Westerns
Last year, a line was drawn in the sane when, as part of their annual summer convention, the Western Writers of America (WWA) decided that they...